'Cake Boss' Valastro helps failing bakeries rise

By Lorena Blas, @byLorenaBlas, USA TODAY

Buddy Valastro, the New Jersey boss of TLC's Cake Boss, is helping failing bakeries in Bakery Boss (tonight, 9 ET/PT). The series follows a special last spring featuring the Friendly Bake Shop in Frankfort, N.Y.

Tonight, viewers will see Valastro update Violet's Bake Shop in Fresh Meadows, N.Y. The series is the latest in a trend of "fix-it" TV series that includes Food Network's Restaurant: Impossible and On the Rocks, Spike's Bar Rescue, Bravo's Tabatha's Salon Takeover, Travel Channel's Hotel Impossible and National Geographic's Church Rescue. But the forerunner is Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, a British show that Fox has adapted for U.S. audiences. It ran from 2004 to 2009 in the U.K.

Andy Dehnart of RealityBlurred.com describes that British version of the show as the gold standard in the genre. "It was really focused on actually helping," he says. Dehnart notes that when Fox brought Ramsay to U.S. audiences and "Fox-ified" the show by turning it "into more screaming and swearing and breaking things than actual help and learning," it became apparent that there's a real appeal to "watching someone come in and tell other people what they've done wrong, but also bring them the hope of change and the idea that change can occur super-fast and be almost miraculous."

Valastro knows he's not a miracle worker. "I lay it out there, but I don't have the magic pill," he says. "They still have to continue to work hard, and it's inevitably going to be up to them."

With Cake Boss and Next Great Baker series already on TLC, why start this show? "I feel like I'm established enough as far as who I am in the industry where people are going to respect what I say," Valastro says.

And the popularity of such shows confirms that people want expert help. Robert Irvine's Restaurant: Impossible is in the middle of Season 7. New episodes air Wednesdays at 10 ET/PT. Restaurateur and chef Irvine says that when he first started RI, "it was about fulfilling a need from … people that kept e-mailing me asking for help." Since then, "the show has turned into something relationship-based, food-based, it's (about) decor and morphed into something that I could never have even dreamt of."

The show troubleshoots a restaurant's problems in two days. "We all like to champion someone who's having a hard time," Irvine says. "We can relate to failure because we've all been there in some shape or form in our lives." Each episode "has a beginning, when I walk in the door and you tell me your story. It has the middle, when you actually realize that I'm there to help you. And then we have an end, where I reveal the restaurant and we reveal a new menu and a plan for you to be successful."

That is a recipe very similar to the one at Bakery Boss. And at first, for many of the bakery owners being helped, participating might not be such an easy thing to swallow. "Nobody wants somebody else to come in and tell them what they are doing wrong," Valastro says. But owners eventually realize that "I'm there to assess what the problem with the bakery is." He adds that they may not want to hear the stinging truth, but "I have to make them see it. And then, if they're willing to change, hopefully things will get better."

Though he says his crew spends about a week and a half on the ground at each struggling bakery -- Valastro says he spends four or five days on site -- Irvine's show has the pressure of getting things done in 36 hours, with a $10,000 budget from the network. Why the deadline? "We didn't get longer because it's more expensive to do so and also anybody can fix a restaurant in a week, two weeks, three weeks. That's easy."

Dehnart says the time pressure has pluses. "The really rapid schedule they have works well with both the network's desire not to spend any money on the show and also the desire to create lots of drama, so you have a really intense, tight deadline."

Irvine says that with each visit, he has made relationships and stays in contact with the families featured on the show. Valastro is getting a taste of that in Season 1 of Bakery Boss.

"I feel emotionally connected," the master baker says. "One thing I said to them every time I did the reveal is, 'I'm not gonna cry. I'm not gonna cry.' Once they start crying and they hug you, it's like an instant reaction."

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.